Ensorcell (revising)

three

Once she was finally free from the fins of that doctor, the first place she looked was a map of London, though she figured she wouldn't have any luck there. She tried the library, though the librarian thought she was crazy and Harriet couldn't figure out how to use the computer. So, as a last resort, she wandered the streets and hoped that her newfound powers would help her discover where she needed to go.

It wasn't long before she heard whispers of magic and a pint from a small man in a dress that passed her by. Underneath the dress were regular clothes, pants and a shirt, though it looked outdated and yellowed with age. There was some kind of wall between him and her, and his thoughts weren't complete. Almost like they were hidden from view, behind a screen.

So, reasonably, she followed him for forty five minutes before he stomped in front of a shabby restaurant called the Leaky Cauldron and hauled himself through the door. Harriet first looked at her surroundings, seeing a bookstore on the left and a record store on the right, with apartments surrounding the rest of the building spaces around them.

This was it, her first interaction with magic.

Leaky Cauldron was exactly as Harriet had expected it, almost as if she'd seen it in a dream before. With Tom the bartender, though she wasn't sure how she knew his name, and the crooked-toothed man who sat one seat away from the end of the table with eggs scattered about his plate and a sausage piece in his hand. There was the woman in purple robes perched upon a barstool nursing a glass of amber liquid and the man with blue robes and pointy shoes chatting with the woman in purple. It was scarce and homey, just how Harriet knew it would be.

She approached the bar, smiling as politely as she could up at the aged man. "I'm a little lost, mister. My parents took a turn and suddenly I couldn't find them. They said they were going to Gringotts, can you help me?"

"Oh! You poor thing!" he cried, clutching his heart woefully. "Of course, dear! Don't you worry, I'll lead you out the back and the bank is a straight shot forward. The brightest one in the back."

He was quick to show her, tapping a pattern onto the bricks next to the back door of the pub. Harriet felt a strange tingling run up her arms and legs as the bricks moved themselves into a doorway, opening her eyes to the real magic that existed in the world.

The magic that she had.

An old finger pointed out the building she was looking for, and he left in the next second. So much for showing her the way. Do witches and wizards just let their kids run wherever?

All around her were shops of all kinds, people of different varieties, animals galore. All of the people she saw had on those funny dresses, though most did not have regular clothes under, that had more strange garments that looked like they belonged in the 1800s. There were children everywhere too, laughing and playing and spending time with their parents.

Then it hit her. She had no family here, no one to claim her or take care of her. Harriet Potter was just another orphan to these people, not something that they seemed to particularly care about. How was she supposed to make a living here with no education, no money whatsoever, and no plan for life? So, Harriet did the only thing she could in that moment.

She went back to the Dursley's.

~*~

It took two months for people to come knocking on the Dursley's door about Harriet's test results. The first time it was simply the mailman delivering the news, and then it was a news station that Gloria Johnson had called about the fire - who had waited this long to see if Petunia would sabotage her garden again, and she did. And they knocked quite a few times. Then, it was the professor.